Vanessa Carlton

Watch & Listen

Vanessa Carlton

Vanessa Carlton had been going at full sprint since she was discovered by legendary record executive Ahmet Ertegun when she was still a teenager, signed by Jimmy Iovine soon after, and exploded onto the pop scene with the platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated Be Not Nobody in 2002. But as she was nearing thirty, Carlton felt lost.

Carlton needed a fresh start and ultimately, she made her way to Peter Gabriel's Real World studios in Box, England, where she created something that harks back to a different era of music-making: ten intimate, evocative songs, recorded direct to tape with a close-knit team of collaborators. The songs that make up rabbits on the run, her 2011 release, retain Carlton's impeccable melodic sensibility, but are consistently surprising and unpredictable.
"I felt like I wasn't navigating, but the time was navigating me," says Vanessa Carlton. "I wasn't manipulating the process at all. I got to that place where you don't think about how you're going to do it, you just do it in the way that feels the most clear and right. That shouldn't be so exotic, but I'd never gone through it before." Now Vanessa is back at work embarking on a brand new album. She returned to the site of her inspiration, Box, England to work with producer Steve Osborne once again at Real World Studios. Be on the lookout for the release of Vanessa's fifth studio album in early 2014.